prey without the precaution of a neck-ring. A single boatman can easily oversee twelve or fifteen of these birds, and although hundreds may be out upon the water, each one knows its own master. If one seize a fish too heavy for him alone, another comes to his assistance, and the two carry it aboard. The birds themselves are fed on bean-curd, and eels or fish. They lay eggs when three years old, which are often hatched under barn

yard hens, and the chickens fed with eel's blood and hash. They do not fish during the summer months. The price of a pair varies from $5 to $8. Mussels are caught in small cylindrical basket-traps, attached to a single rope, and floated with the tide near the bottom. Similar traps for catching land-crabs are laid along the edges of fields, sometimes baited with a little dried fish. When the receding tide leaves the river banks dry, the boat people get overboard and wade in the mud, or push themselves along on a board with one foot, in search of such things as harbor in the slime.

In moonlight nights, low, narrow shallops, provided with a wide white board fastened to the wale and floating upon the water, are anchored in still water; the moon shining on the board, the deceived fish leap out upon it or into the boat; twenty or thirty of these decoys can be seen near Macao on moonlight evenings engaged in this fishery. Sometimes a boat, furnished with a treddle, goes up and down near the shores striking boards against its bottom and sides; the startled fish are caught in the net dragging astern. The crews of many small boats combine to drive

the fish into their nets by splashing and striking the water, or into a pool on the margin of the river at high tide, in which they are easily retained by wattles, and scooped out when the water has fallen. Divers clap sticks together under water to drive their prey into the nots set for them, or catch them with their toes, when, terrified at the noise, they hide in the mud. Neither fly-fishing nor angling with hook and line is much practised; its tedium and small returns would be poor amends to a Chinese for the elegance of the tackle, or the science displayed in adapting the fly to the fish's taste.

By these and other contrivances, the Chinese capture the finny tribes, and it is no surprise to hear that China contains as many millions of people as there are days in the year, when one sees upon what a large proportion of them feed, and how they live. Christian education, it is to be hoped, will not make them dislike or despise labor; it will teach them to make a better use of their strength by the gradual introduction and application of machinery, while a corresponding increase of comforts and privileges will attend their progress in a knowledge of the arts of agriculture and mechanics. Their expenditure of human labor appears enormous to those who are accustomed to the manufactories and engines of western lands, but perhaps nothing would cause so much distress in China as the premature and inconsiderate introduction of labor-saving machines. Population is so close upon the means of production, sometimes even overpassing them, that those who would be thrown out of employment, would, owing chiefly to their ignorance, suffer and cause incalculable distress before relief and labor could be furnished them. There are, for instance, six or seven yards near Canton where logs are sawed by hand, but all of them together hardly turn out as many feet of boards as one mill of three or four saws would do. Yet the two hundred men employed in these yards would perhaps be half-starved if turned off in their present condition; though there is every reason for believing that improvements. will be introduced as soon as those who see their superiority are assured they can be made profitable.

The mechanical arts and implements of the Chinese partake of the same simplicity which has been remarked in their agricultural, as if the faculty of invention or the notion of altering a thing, had died with the discoverer, and he had had the best

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guarantee for the freehold of his contrivance in the deprivation of all desire in his successors to alter it. This servility of imita tion greatly retards their advancement, and marks their rank of mind beneath the more inventive European; in the absence of superior models, it produces a degree of apathy to all improvement, which strangely contrasts with their general industry and literary tastes. Simplicity of design pervades all operations, and when a machine directs in the best known manner the power of the hand which wields it, or aids in executing tiresome operations, its purpose is considered to be fully answered, for it was intended to assist and not to supplant human labor. Yet with all their simplicity, some of them are both effectual and ingenious, and not a few are made to answer two or three ends. For instance, the bellows, an oblong box divided into two compartments, and worked by a piston and two valves in the upper, which forces the wind into the lower part, and out of the nozzle, is used by the travelling tinker as a seat when at work, and a chest for his tools when his work is done; though it does not, indeed, serve all these purposes with any remarkable efficiency.

In the arts of metallurgy, the Chinese have attained only to mediocrity, and to this deficiency may perhaps be partly ascribed their little progress in some other branches, which could not be executed without tools of peculiar size or nicety. Mines of iron, lead, copper, and zinc are worked, though the modes employed in digging the ore, preparing and smelting it, or purifying the metals from alloy, have not been fully examined; nor is it known how gold, silver, or quicksilver are separated from their ores; all of them are brought to market in a pure state. Gold is used sparingly for ornaments, but is beaten into leaves about two inches square for gilding; the thread is more commonly imported, and the ingots serve as bullion in payments to a limited degree. Mr. Gordon, in his trip to Fuhkien in 1834, found the people ignorant of its value, for he could only pass doubloons for a dollar apiece, the natives having never seen them before, nor so well acquainted with the metal as to recognise it. Their exquisite workmanship in chased and carved work in both gold and silver, such as baskets, card-cases, tea-pots, combs, &c., is almost unequalled, and admirably exhibits the nice filigree work which agrees so well with Chinese genius. The flower-baskets of fine wire, with chased flowers and figures of various sorts enamelled

on the outside, in which precious stones are set, may perhaps be regarded as the master-piece of native art in the working of metals.

Steel is formed upon the blade or tool, by heating and cooling the iron edge, though the prepared metal is also imported and worked up to some extent, and sometimes made in small pieces by the Chinese themselves. Iron is cast into thin plates and various utensils of considerable size, but even the largest of their pieces, viz. bells and cannon, the easiest of all castings, are small com pared with the shafts and wheels made in Europe. Wrought iron is not used to any considerable extent, except for making nails, screws, hinges, and other small articles, though its quality is remarkably good. The peh tung, or white copper of the Chinese, is an alloy of copper 40.4, zinc 25.4, nickel 31.6, and iron 2.6, and occasionally a little silver; these proportions are nearly the same as German silver. "When in a state of ore, it is said to be powdered, mixed with charcoal dust, and placed in jars over a slow fire, the metal rising in the form of vapor in a distilling apparatus, and afterwards condensed in water.' * When new, this alloy appears almost as lustrous as silver, and is manufactured into incense-jars and stands for temple service, boxes, and a vast variety of fancy articles, besides a few household utensils, not intended to be used near the fire. Puzzling specimens of work are made of it, as small tea-pots, lined on the outside with earthen, and ornamented with a handle and a spout of stone, and having characters on the sides. The white copper varies a good deal in its appearance and malleability, owing probably to mixtures added after distillation.

Copper is seldom used for culinary utensils, and comparatively little in the arts, though latterly the consumption has increased at Canton, for the manufacture of bronze lamps. The manufactures of gongs, cymbals, and trumpets, brass-leaf for constructing the kin hwa used in worship, and the copper coin of the country, consume probably four fifths of all the copper used. The gong is employed on all occasions, and its piercing clamor can be heard at all times of day and night, especially if one lives near the water; it is an alloy of tin and copper, but the proportions or the mode of making them are not accurately known.

*The Chinese, Vol. II., page 229 Penny Cyclopædia, Art. COPPER.

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Bells and tripods are sometimes cast of a large size, as for instance that at Peking (mentioned in Chap. II., p. 64); but those usually seen in temples are under four feet in height, and are generally covered with prayers and inscriptions of a religious character; they have no tongue, and are struck with a mallet. The tripods for receiving the ashes of papers consumed in worship, also bear legends, and the priests of different temples take the same pride in showing their ancient bells, tripods, and other like rarities, which Romish priests do in exhibiting their relics and paintings. The Chinese say that the art of casting the largest specimens of these two articles in as fine a style of workmanship as formerly is not now possessed. The metallic mirrors, once the only reflectors the Chinese manufactured, are still used to a considerable extent; the alloy is like that of gongs with a little silver added. These mirrors have long been remarkable for a singular property which some of them possess of reflect. ing the raised figures on the back when held in the sun; this is caused by their outline being traced upon the polished surface in very shallow lines, and the whole plate afterwards rubbed until the lines are equally bright with the other parts, and only to be rendered visible in the strongest sunlight. Besides the metallic articles already mentioned, the ornamental and antique bronze and copper figures, noticeable for their curious forms and fine polishing and tracery, afford the best specimens of Chinese art in imitating the human figure. They are mostly statuettes, representing men, gods, birds, monsters, &c., in the most grotesque shapes and attitudes; some of them are beautifully ornamented with delicate scrolls and flowers of fine silver wire inserted into grooves cut in the metal.

The manufacture of glass is carried on chiefly at Canton, and the gradual increase in its use, for windows, tumblers, lamps, and other articles of household furniture, shows that the Chinese are quite ready to adopt such things from foreign countries as they see the advantages of. The importation of broken glass for remelting has entirely ceased, and flints are carried from England for the use of glass-blowers. The furnaces are small, and the window-glass is often veined, though clear; colored glass ornaments and chandeliers are also made. The most finished Chinese have yet

articles in the glass manufacture which the produced are ground shades for Argand lamps. Looking-glasses